


Five Times Clint Saw His Teammates, and One Time They Saw Him

by rohanrider3



Category: Avengers Assemble (Cartoon), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Clint Barton, BAMF Hulk, BAMF Natasha Romanov, BAMF Steve Rogers, BAMF Thor, BAMF Tony Stark, Clint Barton & Hulk Friendship, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton & Steve Rogers Friendship, Clint Barton & Thor Friendship, Clint Barton & Tony Stark Friendship, Clint Barton-centric, Clintasha - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Team Dynamics, Team Feels, Team Fluff, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 13:01:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10387215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rohanrider3/pseuds/rohanrider3
Summary: Everyone runs on something. Clint is better than most at seeing at what that is.And people--especially the Avengers--are full of surprises.Or, don't underestimate the "least powerful" team member just because he fights evil with snark and a weapon from the paleolithic era.





	1. Natasha

Five Times Hawkeye Saw His Teammates, and One Time They Saw Him

  
Natasha

“I won’t take the assignment.” The woman’s voice was low, her fist clenched tight in its half-glove.  
Fury’s one good eye bulged from its socket, and his voice cut through the low chatter of the meeting room like a knife.  
“Ex-cuse me, Agent Romanoff?”  
In the stunned silence, Clint looked over at the new recruit—oh, crap, that’s right, his new recruit—and felt his eyebrows climbing upward until they disappeared into his spiky yellow hair. His typically flip retorts failed him and he looked over his thin purple sunglasses at Romanoff’s stiff figure.  
“Uh?” he hazarded. “Come again?”  
“I refuse the assignment.” Romanoff said again, bluntly. “It—“ she swallowed, once. “I won’t do it.” she said again, flatly. Commander Nick Fury set his tablet down with an ominous sounding thwud of metal.  
“You all could use a coffee break.” he said calmly. “Right now.” As one, the dozen or so other SHIELD agents sitting frozen at the conference table scattered, like frightened pigeons, to the four corners of the Tri-Carrier, glad to escape the inevitable carnage.   
“Not you, Barton.” Fury said. “Or you, Romanoff.” Clint bit back a retort that actually he was just craving caffeine—so long as it was located two miles away from the conference room—and stayed where he was, leaning against the doorframe. Honestly, he hadn’t been about to leave anyway.  
Fury leveled an even gaze at their new recruit. “Care to explain why you’re refusing your first assignment on your first day, Romanoff?”  
Romanoff looked solidly at the file in front of her and kept her voice level, but a thin edge of anger sliced through it.  
“I can’t.” she said. “I willingly accept any subsequent consequences as soon as you decide what those are.” She stood up hastily. “Permission to be dismissed.”  
Fury studied her for a moment. Then, “Permission granted.” She was almost at the door before he added, “Don’t go far.” Without looking back at him, she nodded, once, then passed Clint and disappeared towards the stairs.   
The look Fury shot at Clint was sharp. And questioning. Clint rubbed at the back of his head with one hand, frowning to himself.  
“Before you say anything, I stand by what I said earlier.” he said without pausing. “She’s worth it.”  
“Not if she won’t take orders.” Fury said bluntly. “The Council will have her head on a pike in half a minute, given the chance. And insubordination is a hell of a way to start writing off red in your ledger, glowing recommendation or not.”  
Clint chewed his lower lip, frowning. Then shot a glance over at where Romanoff had disappeared.  
“I’ll…go find out what’s wrong.” he said.   
Fury grunted. “Mm-hmmmm.” he said ominously.   
  
Two months earlier—Rome, Italy

Clint sighted down his arrow at the target, a drop dead (huh, literally, she was lethal in at least six different ways from her profile) gorgeous red head who was currently having a twilight dinner in an Italian cafe and making nice to the accountant SHIELD was protecting. Clint personally could have cared less about the guy—he was a bitchy little weasel looking for a quick pay out—but he held some key testimony for taking down some very nasty mobsters, and SHIELD was willing to shelter his sorry ass in return for some time in the witness box.  
Which is why the mobsters had sent the freaking Black Widow after him.  
Clint breathed out and readied himself for the shot, taking into account the slight breeze blowing off the Tiber, the fading light from the sunset, and the roving bands of tourists. He didn’t like killing people. Actually, he preferred deterring them permanently—jokes about arrows to the knees ending adventuring were all well and good, but also had a grain of truth in them. You didn’t walk off something like that. And it left you alive to rethink your life choices.  
But the Black Widow was a nightmare. Ruthless, driven, with an unbelievably high body count. She’d taken out one too many people SHIELD had been interested in keeping alive, and had sent Clint to remove the threat once and for all.   
Clint drew back the arrow.  
And the Black Widow broke her cover to save a child’s life.  
It had been fast. Really fast.   
From the burst of static and shouts on his comms, the rest of the SHIELD agents guarding their actual interest hadn’t seen it happen, or at least hadn’t seen the details. But Clint had.  
He’d seen the red-haired woman stiffen when two businessmen got up and left, passing a mother and her little girl—seven years old, tops—at the next table over, happily eating gelato. He’d seen her ditch Mr. Mcsleezy in the middle of a flirtatious laugh and snatch away the briefcase the men had left at their table, chucking it into the middle of the Tiber. He’d seen her scream a warning to the boatmen, then whip around and dive towards the confused mother and daughter, flipping their table over and dragging them down behind it.  
Everyone had seen the explosion.  
Twenty feet of roaring water draws that kind of attention.  
Luckily—but it hadn’t been luck, he’d seen Black Widow in action and had read her file, he knew she knew how to aim—the briefcase had landed in the middle of the river, away from any passenger boats or pleasure cruises. Far enough away, anyway.  
She was gone by the time the crowds started to panic. Which was about three seconds after the bomb went off.  
Clint studied the scene for a moment longer. His sharp eyes picked out the frantic man who showed up at the scene five seconds later as a little known but swiftly rising politician who’d pissed off some powerful mobsters by pushing for a trial. Where a certain bitchy accountant would play a powerful role. As the pale-faced father clutched his sobbing wife and sniffling child to him, Clint was already racing over the Italian rooftops. The other SHIELD bodyguards were on top of things at the cafe.  
He just hoped he got to the Widow first.  
Before her comrades did.  
He found her running down an alley, expensive shoes clicking on the uneven tiles. She was fast, but he was faster. It probably helped that he’d ditched the rooftops, shouldered his bow, and was on a motorcycle.  
She stopped short, about ten feet away, and trained two guns on him when he roared out of the darkness and blocked the alley in front of her. The short barrels of her weapons gleamed in the dying light. For his part, Clint kept one hand close to his throwing knife, hidden in a sheath on his back. He held out his other hand to her.  
“Come with me if you want to live.” he said, doing his best Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation.  
The Widow scoffed. “Please.” The hammers on the guns clicked back.  
Clint shrugged one shoulder, hoping he wouldn’t have to take the second option and actually complete his mission.  
“Your call, Romanoff. I saw what happened. Pretty sloppy if your guys were just trying to take out the accountant and the Riavelli girls. You think that bomb wasn’t meant for you too? Your best bet is to come with me before they come to finish the job.”  
Widow shifted her stance. “You talk too much.”   
Clint snorted. “Yeah, heard that before—listen, I’m offering you a chance. Come with me. I can cut you a deal with SHIELD. Wipe the red out of your ledger.”  
The Widow’s eyes gleamed in the darkness of the alley. “Who says I want to?”  
Clint grinned at her, but there was nothing lighthearted about the expression in his eyes. “The part of you that saved the Riavellis when you could have taken cover yourself. The part of you that persistently and actively avoids innocent collateral damage, which, by the way, is unique in your organization. Probably the reason you’re on their list now too.”   
The Widow was quiet again.   
“It was a one time thing. They’ll take me back.”  
Clint raised an eyebrow at her. “Uh-huh. And the bus in Yugoslavia, and the school in London, and that baby carriage in Prague, those were one time things too.” He paused. “How do you guys count in Russia?” he wondered.  
Widow stiffened. “How?—“ she said, her voice outraged.  
Clint grinned again. “I’ve got good eyes. I see things.” His voice changed, became serious. “Get on the bike.”  
Widow didn’t lower her guns. “How do I know you won’t just kill me?”  
Clint revved the engine obnoxiously. “You don’t. But you do know that those guys following you in the cab will be here in, oh, ten seconds. And that they they’re carrying very powerful and very illegal machine guns and don’t give a rat’s ass about collateral damage.” There was an exasperated sigh, and Clint beamed as Natasha Romanoff swished her dress, swung her leg up, and sat behind him on the bike.  
He felt a little less cocky when he felt something cold and sharp prick him in the ribcage.  
“If this is a double cross, I will shiv your spleen.” she whispered into his ear. Clint smirked and shrugged. He’d expected nothing less.  
“Fair enough.” he said cheerfully. “Let’s go!”   
“And,” he added, as they sped down the alleyway and towards the lights of St. Peter’s Square, “if you could put that knife down, that’d be great—there are some stairs coming up and you really don’t want a cooling corpse driving this thing. And no, there isn’t space for you to shove me off and drive it yourself. Hang on!!”

Present  
  
He found her on the Tri-Carrier’s observation deck. Specifically, on the most deserted section of the observation deck, right at the edge of the balcony that ran around the clear dome and let you see beyond the clouds when the nights were clear. It was clear now.  
Romanoff was just sitting stiffly there, legs tucked up beneath her, chin tilted back, looking at the stars as they spun slowly by. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it hadn’t been this. He’d thought she’d be in the gym breaking some test dummy’s neck or something.  
He sat down beside her with a grunt, long legs dangling out over the edge of the balcony.  
“You said it’d be different.” she said stonily. Her tone was curt, sharp.  
“Than the Russian mob? Absolutely.” he replied. “But we still have to follow orders, we can’t just do whatever we like.”  
“Not that.” she said angrily. “You said I could wipe the red out of my ledger.”  
“Yeah. So?”  
“So killing…more killing…it adds more red.” She laughed, short and bitter. “I’ll never wipe it out.”   
Clint raised an eyebrow. “Your first job is an execution?”  
Romanoff sighed and rubbed at her eyes. “Yeah. Some warlord out in Rwanda.”  
Clint frowned. “That’s weird. Executions aren’t common. And not as first assignments.”  
“Well, they’re what I’m good at.” Her voice was thick, tired. Resigned.  
“Uh-huh.” Clint stretched out. “You have heard of tyrannicide, right?” he asked. “That’s killing.” Romanoff stared at him. He held up a finger. “Justified killing, no less. And it’s not wrong. No red in ledger, at-all.” Romanoff’s unblinking stare annoyed him. “Hell, lady, I got this from an eighty year old Catholic priest who wallops you if you use the name of the Lord in vain, okay? I’m not making this up!” He ground his teeth at the blank look in her eyes.   
“Look. Like I said, I read your file. I was there at your hearing. I know those bastards in the Red Room put you through one hell of a mental wringer. And that you don’t want to listen to them anymore. But I swear to God that killing is—sometimes—justified. Besides—you’re not the Red Room’s agent anymore. You left them. You’re not theirs.”  
Romanoff started to smile at this, then subsided. “What you’ve said may be true. But…” she hesitated. “There’s collateral damage in this assignment.” she said, very low. “That’s why I can’t do it.”  
“Collateral what now?”  
“I’m supposed to get him when he drops his nephews off at school—and I can’t—“  
Clint reached over, grabbed her wrist, and brought up her assignment on her small wrist device, his eyes narrow and mouth tight in anger. She gasped and, looking back at the situation, Clint was surprised she hadn’t broken both his wrists out of reflex.  
“What are you doing?!” she demanded, and Clint realized something about Natasha Romanoff. She got angry when she was scared. But only the anger showed in her voice.  
And she sounded angry a lot.  
All the time, actually.   
And it got worse when other people got angry back.  
Huh.  
Clint altered his tone from the snarl it was going to be and straightened it out into wry snark instead.  
“Finding out your assignment officer is a jackass.” he replied. “This mission hasn’t been researched at all. And you’re right—that’s a ridiculously terrible way to take down the bastard.”  
Romanoff’s wrist twitched out of his grip and he let it go. “You don’t refer to them as the target?”  
“Why would I?” he replied. “These guys are scumbags, assholes, and sons of bitches. I change up the terms depending on how bad their profile is.”  
Romanoff threw back her head and laughed. Actually laughed, and the sound sounded strange coming from her—as if she hadn’t done it in a long time. “You’ll have to teach me the ranks sometime.”  
Clint smirked, maneuvered himself to his feet, and held out a hand to her. “Let’s go back to the conference room and start with your assignment officer. I can’t wait to hear what Nick thinks—old Fury’s got more ranks then I do.”  
Romanoff looked up at him in surprise. “We can question the missions?”  
“Yeah. We’re supposed to, if we think something’s wrong with them.”  
“And you don’t get punished?” she pressured.  
Clint realized the implications of the question and had to make a conscious effort not to squeeze his hands into white-knuckled fists. He was helping her up and didn’t want to snap her fingers by accident. “Nope.” The tightness around her eyes eased slightly. He didn’t want to think about what the Red Room had done to their little agents in training to make them that…scared.  
“You’re still thinking Red Room.” he told her. “Think S.H.I.E.L.D.”  
“I don’t know what that is.”  
“You will. Now come on. Before we reconvene I want to shoot some spitballs into your A.O.’s coffee. Lazy bastard.”

 


	2. Tony

Clint wasn’t supposed to be at the hospital—hell, he wasn’t supposed to be in the same _state_ as this particular S.H.I.E.L.D. base—but had dropped by between missions to see how Natasha was doing. The doctors had said she was doing fine—if “fine” meant enforced medical coma—but he still felt guilty about the pneumothorax and wanted to see her, even if she wasn’t awake.  
She wasn’t.  
Clint still felt awful.  
He knew it’d been necessary, and had even saved her life, but she’d been so confused and scared when he’d pulled out that last arrow out of his quiver, and he’d tried to explain to her what he had to do, but she hadn’t understood and after he’d done it she’d just looked at him with tears in her eyes like he’d stabbed her in the back—  
Which he had—  
Technically—  
But it had been to help her breathe, she’d been dying in front of him, and if she was awake and not disorientated from blood loss, he could explain it to her again, and maybe she would forgive him this time instead of passing out in his arms right before the actual medics arrived—  
Aw, hell.  
“Barton, honey, you gotta stop leavin her flowers.” Debbie, the big black nurse on duty told him fondly, when he stopped by and left yet another flower arrangement, this one of big red roses. A puzzled looking turtle doll was perched in the midst of the blooms. “And are there any more stuffed animals left at those carnivals? Leave some for the rest of us, baby—Tasha’s runnin out of room as it is. D’ other day I just about killed mysel after I tripped over some dam unicorn when I was changing her IV lines.”  
“But they don’t let me bring her weapons to the hospital.” Clint said, confused. “The only things they let me bring are flowers, or stuffed animals, or glass figurines, but she says she hates those. Says they break too easily.” A thought struck him and he slumped, depressed. “And I don’t even know if she likes flowers.” He perked up again swiftly. “Hey! You think she’d like balloons?”  
Debbie chortled. “Honey, I promise I will call you the minute she wakes up. Docs say that should happen sometime this week. She’s gettin better, I promise.”  
Clint curled his hands deeper into the pockets of his leather jacket. “Right.”  
“Even though she doesn’t look it.”  
“Yeah.”  
“Her color’s better.”  
“Uh huh.”  
“And she’s breathin fine.” she reassured him. Clint swallowed once, hard. “Are you sure she—“  
“The oxygen mask’s just to make sure.” she told him. “Just in case. She’ll be off it s—“  
A sound from down the hall made them both turn round. A tall man with disheveled dark hair and a baseball cap askew on his head had staggered as he shut the door to a hospital room. Then he’d fallen heavily against the opposite hallway wall, wiping at his face.  
“Jesus.” Clint heard the man whisper. “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”  
“Sir?” Debbie called, concern in her voice. “You all righ?”  
The man straightened himself up and turned round, zipping his jacket up tight, pulling at the cuffs in an almost pitiful effort at aplomb.  
“Yes, thank you, Nurse Nightingale.” he said, voice cracking slightly. He looked round the empty hallways and nodded briskly to himself.  
“Not much of a crowd tonight, huh?” he asked breezily. “Looks like a movie theater rerunning the, uh, The Phantom Menace.”  
Clint raised an eyebrow. He saw the man yanking again at his cufflinks—too hard at his cufflinks—too hard at his non-existent cufflinks, since the man was wearing a flannel shirt and a thick windbreaker jacket. Beneath his old baseball cap and his mask of breezy calm, his eyes looked tired. And heartsick. Clint noticed he’d come out of old Mrs. Wilson’s room. She’d lost her only son in Afghanistan a few months back, during a botched protection detail for some rich weapons-dealing jackass, and she’d suffered a heart attack soon after receiving the news. Sam had been a S.H.I.E.L.D. trainee, and his mother was a widow with little to no insurance and increasing Alzheimers. Fury had taken care of her himself.  
“Can I help you?” Debbie asked again.  
The man shook his head sharply, once, twice, then coughed and sauntered up to the counter.  
“Say, you know what?” He said conspiratorially. “This place needs a little, a little life pumped into it. What do they need to brighten it up for everybody, give it a little—you know, zing?” He drummed his fingers on the clean countertop nervously. “I have some ideas but I doubt they’d be feasible. Or safe, you know. For sick people. Or legal.” he added, as an afterthought.  
“Ice Cream Fridays are a big thing.” Clint offered casually. Debbie was looking nervous and her fingers were inching their way towards the panic button, but Clint gave her a reassuring smile and a conspiratorial wink. If need be he could send this guy packing without a problem, but he didn’t think that would be necessary. He could see this guy wasn’t nuts. Not totally, anyway. Just…lonely. And torn up about something.  
Guilty conscience, it looked like.  
“Make it Ice Cream October.” the man said, scrawled out a check, handed it to Debbie, and turned on his heel before she’d had time to do more than gape at the numbers. She called after him.  
“Sir!! That’s…that’s an awful lot of money…”  
“I’m good for it!” the man called back, and disappeared into the elevators before Debbie could say another word. Wide-eyed, her mouth a perfect “o” of astonishment, she stared at the check, and then at Clint.  
“How much ice cream do you think you can get for that?” she said in a low voice, and showed him the check. Clint looked over his glasses and let out a soundless whistle. “Probably enough to feed the US for a year.” he offered, then stared again at the check, this time at the signature.  
It was signed “Tony Stark.”  
The next time Clint visited Natasha, she was awake and reveling in a gigantic bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream. So was Mrs. Wilson, who couldn’t stop telling Clint about the “nice young man” who came in and had been so “charming” and let her tell him all about her Sam and what a good son he was—and just look at these roses that Sam had sent her for the last three weeks!  
She died two months later, smiling sweetly and surrounded by an awful lot of flower arrangements that Clint didn’t think had come from beyond the grave. Not exactly, anyway.  
Years later—after New York, after the Avengers, after a lot of things—Clint had found the right time one night to tell Tony. As he and Tony tinkered about in the workshop trying to synchronize magnetic gauntlets and polarized arrowheads, he told his friend this crazy story about this crazy guy he’d seen once who’d come to a S.H.I.E.L.D. hospital, literally paid a million dollars for ice cream, and how happy he’d made the patients. And this one old lady Mrs. Wilson. And how she’d loved her mystery flower arrangements. But had never known who sent them.  
True to form, Tony hadn’t said anything. And true to form, Clint had pretended not to see Tony scrubbing at his eyes with the back of one gauntleted hand when he thought no one was looking. Then Tony hollered “LOOKALIVE!” and threw a wrench at his head, Clint smirked and shot both of Tony’s new incoming gauntlets out of the air, and everything was back to normal.


	3. Hulk

  
Gigantic rage monsters do not make the best emergency medics.  
But to be fair, the Big Guy was doing his best. Clint reminded himself of this and that he needed to be patient. And also to breathe.  
“You want me to WHAT?” Hulk demanded again, big fists clenching, knuckles the size of Clint’s wrists popping with the sound of small fireworks.  
“Break off the back—then push—the—arrow—out—“ Clint wheezed and tried to reach back over his shoulder. To where Trick Shot’s black-tipped arrow still protruded, black fletches flicking in the salty breeze coming off the San Francisco Bay. But bursts of pain shot out from his broken collarbone and he stopped talking, clamping his teeth tight over what had promised to be a very unmanly shriek of pain.  
Hulk huffed again, even more angrily this time, and his eyes flicked—was that nervously?—from side to side. “That sounds like a terrible idea. I’ll go get Cap. He can do it.”  
“Hulk, come on—he—poisons—them—“ Clint hated pressuring Hulk like this, punching his buttons, making his emotions spike even worse than they already were—  
—he could see his teammate was right, the Green Guy was the worst possible one for the job, even Thor had better finesse—but—  
Clint chanced a quick look around, as much as he could from his position on the ground. On his side. Behind wreckage. With the Hulk crouched low over him as a cover. Cap and Natasha were still pinned down a hundred yards away under heavy fire, Thor had been blasted over the bay and into the walls of Alcatraz by some military grade weapon, and Tony was flying headlong out of the area with one rocket boot and one repulsor blaster, escaping with the six year old hostage they’d come looking for in the first place. Clint and Hulk had taken the brunt of the attack and were currently sheltering behind the wreckage of a warehouse, but that wouldn’t hold for long—  
“—no—ngh—no time—Hulk, trust me, I’ve done this before—“  
“That makes one of us.” Hulk grumbled. “This is a terrible idea, even for you—“  
Clint was going to make some kind of snappy retort, but a sudden burst of white-hot pain made him choke and curl up around the inch of arrowhead sticking out of his chest, lungs heaving for air that refused to come. Above him, he heard Hulk let out a sound somewhere between a gulp and a snarl.  
“C—Clint? Is it…is it that bad? Clint? Clint?!!”  
“Please, man, just—just—get it out of me.” Clint hoped Hulk could hear him. He couldn’t hear himself, exactly. His voice was weak, thready. It felt like a horse had kicked him in the chest. And it was rapidly getting harder to breathe.  
Hulk let out that nervous sound again and readjusted his position so he was kneeling at Clint’s head. “Why can’t I just pull it out from the back, the way it went in?” he asked. “Wouldn’t that hurt less?” Simultaneously with the question, Clint felt pressure on his back—like a big green hand grasping the end of an arrow—and, energized by a fresh burst of panic, flailed his (semi) good arm around until the back of his bloody hand bumped against Hulk’s much, much thicker one.  
“Barbs.” he gasped. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t pull—push—“  
He didn’t cry out when Hulk snapped off the end of the arrow. He didn’t have the breath for it. He did after, though.  
“Sorry.” Hulk said, sounding miserable. “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”  
“ ‘Z’okay.” Clint said raggedly. “‘Z’okay. I made you do it.”  
“Huh.” Hulk said. “Like to see you try.”  
“Just finish—job already—pansy—“ His vision shook around the edges. He felt himself shaking, body trying to simultaneously fight off the poison and get more air. Good luck with that, central nervous system.  
A hand—big, green, the size of a small car’s tire—gripped his shoulder, steadying him. Then—Clint could hardly believe it—he felt it give a tiny, reassuring squeeze. And it actually was tiny. Comparatively.  
Didn’t break any bones at all.  
The voice, when it came, was gentle.  
Still louder than your typical car stereo, but gentle.  
“Stop talking, Clint.”  
Clint snorted, the world starting to go grey around the edges and his words slurring together. “Yeah? Like—to see ya—tr—“  
Hulk wasted no more time. And followed directions perfectly. Clint screamed, loudly this time, he tried not to, but he couldn’t help it, it hurt so _much_ as the arrowhead sticking out of his chest gained one, five, six, twelve inches—then it fell out onto the dirty pier, barbs gleaming wetly, ragged end glinting in the moonlight.  
He heard the thick voice say, “—sorry, sorry, sorry—“ and realized he’d been rolled over onto his back, gaze turned away from the wreckage and towards the distant wintry stars, and his head was resting on the weatherbeaten wood of the pier. And that someone—or something—was applying surprisingly careful pressure onto his wound and slowing the bleeding considerably. And roaring very, very loudly. Very close by.  
Later, after the situation had been contained and the responding medics had identified the toxins (and stopped Clint’s lungs from shutting down), he heard a THWUD from his hospital window. With his one (mostly) good hand, he jabbed the remote control for the blinds and grinned at the big green face staring anxiously in at him.  
He jabbed a thumb back towards the door. “You can use the door, ya know.” He said raspily.  
Hulk snorted and pressed gingerly on the window the size of his hand. Per Clint’s request, Tasha had flipped the catch for that purpose earlier, and it pushed in easily. Hulk spoke quietly over the sound of the chilly breeze.  
“They said visiting hours are over.”  
“Bull. Tasha’s out getting coffee right now.”  
Hesitation from the Big Guy. Clint didn’t press him. Then Hulk asked awkwardly, “You feeling better?”  
Clint grinned and held up both thumbs, bruised tips raised skyward. “Yeah. Lungs working and everything. Thanks, big guy.”  
Hulk grinned, looking pleased and relived. “You want anything?”  
Clint considered. “Chinese would be nice. But they don’t have anything in the hospital besides Jell-O.” He shuddered and winced, rubbing at his shoulder. “Eckgh.”  
Hulk smirked. “We’re in San Francisco. One second.”  
Clint watched, interested, as Hulk bounded away from the hospital’s windows and towards the riotous lights of Chinatown. Tasha came in sipping at a cheap plastic cup.  
“You look pleased.” she said accusingly.  
“Me? With hospital food? Never.” Clint demurred.  
She studied him over the dented plastic rim.  
“Mmmmmm—hmmmm.” She sipped some more. Then, “Dibs on the lo mein.”  
“Aw, come on!” he protested.

 


	4. Thor

“ _NO!!_ ” the big Asgardian screamed, raw fear making his voice crack, something Clint had never heard before. “ _MOTHER!!_ ” Mjolnir leapt from his hand and darted towards the Queen and her captor, but the demon-looking thing flicked a finger, spoke a word, and some sort of writhing shield made of shadows sprang up between them and the Queen. It didn’t deflect the magical weapon, but instead slowed it—just enough to ensure it wouldn’t stop him in time.  
And time slowed down.  
Not literally—the assassin whatsit had said he was after something called an Aether, not a Time Stone—but Clint saw the madman holding Queen Freya draw back his sword and start to slide it between her ribs anyway. Typical terrorist bastard. He knew his game was up and decided to take the hostage with him.  
But he never finished killing Thor’s mother in front of the prince’s very eyes.  
Clint’s arrow was just an ordinary arrow. Not Asgardian made, not magical, not anything special. Just another one of the many Clint had stored in his quiver. It certainly wasn’t faster than a mythic Norse weapon.  
Unless the mythic Norse weapon was being stopped by a magical shield.  
Which hadn’t taken your average human weapon into account.  
The thing holding the Queen twitched, chin abruptly jerking skyward as the arrow tip sank into its brain. Assuming it had a brain. Which it probably didn’t, since it had just tried taking Queen Freya hostage in her own gardens in front of her oldest son. And her son’s friends who had happened to be in the Realm on a so called “diplomatic mission”, which was actually code for “the Avengers needed a Saturday off and their lovable but woefully impetuous resident Asgardian had thought he would surprise them”.  
Boy had he ever. Tony—hell, most of them—were still in their pajamas. Clint, on the other hand, had just come back to the Avengers Tower from a six day mission in Cairo—where he’d gotten maybe six hours sleep total—and was more keyed up than usual on caffeine and adrenaline. More importantly, he’d had all of his gear on him when they’d been yanked through Heimdal’s portal.  
There was a stunned silence as the would-be assassin thing collapsed limply to the ground, crushing a bunch of rose bushes.  
“Mistletoe arrow.” Clint said smugly, around the toothpick he hadn’t realized he still had between his teeth. “Reading Rainbow, Norse myths. BAM.” He mimed dropping a mike, then stopped halfway when he realized that this particular audience of Asgardians wouldn’t get the reference. Well, them and Cap. Clint shrugged, notched another arrow, and scanned the surrounding shrubbery for further crazed Lord of the Rings baddies. The rest of his team did likewise. As Clint scanned the sky for flying reptiles, he thought that it was remarkable how deadly Natasha could look in dark yoga pants and a “I Simply Walked Into Mordor” t-shirt, pink slippers and all. Clint did a double take at the shirt and frowned slightly.  
“Isn’t that my shir—“ he started, and Nat gave him a blank look.  
“What?”  
He rolled his eyes in exaggerated annoyance. “Ack, never mind.”  
Thor, meanwhile, had finished his leap to his mother’s side, retrieved Mjolnir, and confirmed Clint’s kill. Repeatedly. Until the Queen—who’d handled this remarkably well, all things considered—convinced Thor that yes, it was dead, no, there weren’t any more of them, and yes, she would like her roses to come back next spring. Or the spring after that.  
Afterwards, at the celebratory feast, Thor found Clint and gripped his arm in a clasp that made the little bones creak along the forearm. Clint forced himself to twist his grimace of pain into a cocky smile.  
“I thank you, my friend.” Thor said sincerely. “I do not know how to repay this debt.”  
“Don’t.” Clint said casually. “It’s not a debt. It’s a…” he shrugged. “Something anyone decent would do.”  
Thor’s blue eyes twinkled, genuine and grateful. “But you did do it. And you have my thanks.”  
“Don’t mention it, pal.” Clint gripped Thor’s arm back hard and grinned. A beat passed. Then,  
“Hey, Aragorn. Can you let go of my hand? I can’t feel my fingers.”  
“Oh! Of course…er, Bilbo?”  
Clint sighed. “Close enough, pal. Close enough.”


	5. Steve

  
It had been three days since New York.  
Three days since Clint had woken up out of an eerie, agonizing, icy blue haze to find himself literally trying to murder Natasha with his bare hands. Oh, and there had been aliens invading, the Helicarrier had been crippled by explosive AND virus arrows (guess whose fault that was, nicely done, Agent Barton), and dozens if not hundreds of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents gone dead and missing. Including Phil Coulson, the man who’d brought Clint into S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first place. Who’d helped a cocky, mouthy, scared little kid find a path that led him to become a better man.  
Until he’d let himself get brainwashed and, without batting an eye, killed and helped kill countless innocents and teammates.  
Nice job, Clint.  
Excellent training, there.  
Marvelous self-control.  
Everyone was looking at him different now. He didn’t blame them. Most avoided talking to him. He didn’t blame them either. Everyone had lost someone. Or knew someone who had. Had watched their friends and colleagues fall to their deaths when some goddamned psychopath had nearly shot their flying fortress straight out of the sk—  
Clint socked the punching bag so hard his knuckles split under the strain. He swore under his breath, bobbed back, and hit it with a roundhouse kick that sent the heavy bag bouncing on the short chain. Clint kicked it again, then punched it once more for good measure with his other hand. He hadn’t seen Tasha in two days, ever since they’d eaten schwarma with a Norse god, a mad genius, a rage monster, and a hero from the 40s. Correction—he’d been avoiding Tasha since then. Or she’d been avoiding him.  
He didn’t know for sure.  
He didn’t care.  
He didn’t.  
He really, really didn’t.  
Son of a _bitch_ —  
On the other side of the deserted gym, a door creaked open. Another man walked in, saw Clint, and paused.  
“Mind if I join you?”  
Clint shrugged. For once in his life, he didn’t have much to say to anyone.  
The man walked over, hung up another punching bag nearby without much of an effort. Clint recognized him from New York.  
“Captain Rogers.” he said stiffly.  
“Anyone who fights off invading Chitari with me can call me Steve.” the other man said kindly.  
Clint grunted and turned back to the punching bag he was mauling. Something flew towards him from the side and he turned, lightning fast, reaching up one hand and snatching the thing out of the air, feeling his heart rate skyrocket. Then he actually looked at what he had caught. It was a roll of boxing tape.  
“Might want to tie up your knuckles.” Steve observed. “You’re splattering all over the mat.”  
Clint grunted, again, and, more to shut up the “team mom” guy than anything else, wrapped his split knuckles up and tossed the tape back to him.  
“Thanks.” he said shortly.  
“Don’t mention it.” They trained for awhile in silence, dull thuds of the blows echoing in the otherwise empty gym.  
“Agent Romanoff was asking after you.” Steve said offhandedly. Clint gritted his teeth and kept hitting his target mercilessly. “Said something about training needing to be done. Promised her I’d get an answer from you if I found you.” When Clint still didn’t respond, the other man’s tone stayed polite, but insistent. “What should I tell the lady?”  
Clint grunted. “Tell her I’ll find her.”  
“And when might that be?”  
“Eventually.”  
“Oh?”  
“Yep.”  
“As in, sometime before Christmas?”  
Clint bit down the faintest urge to smirk—Captain Stars and Stripes had a snarky side after all. Then he remembered Coulson talking about his hero, enthusiasm brightening his voice—and the smirk vanished utterly.  
“I’ll find her—“ WHACK—“when I’m sure—“THWUD—“that I won’t—“KICK—“go all pyscho again.“ SMASH—and there went his hand again. Dammit. Clint kicked at the bag in frustration. Steve nodded slightly.  
“I talked to the doctors. The mind control ended when Agent Romanoff rattled your skull. Twice.”  
“Yeah, well. Don’t want to frak things up again, that’s all. Enough bodies on the ground as it is.”  
There was a long pause. Steve had stopped his practice when Clint had, and was now staring at him intently, arms crossed over his chest.  
“Oh.” When it came, the other man’s voice was dry. “I see. You got the _special_ kind of brainwashing.”  
Clint stopped glaring at the bag and shot Steve a look that could have melted ice in a Russian winter. “What?” he said flatly. Steve shrugged one shoulder.  
“You know, the kind that lets you hold yourself responsible for what happened, isolate yourself from your team, and generally do everything except throw yourself in jail. Agent Romanoff, on the other hand—“  
“Leave her _out_ of this—“ Clint snarled—actually snarled, but Rogers continued speaking calmly as if nothing had happened—  
“—she’s experienced your typical brainwashing, the one where she is not held accountable for her actions. She hates that it happened, but accepts that she was used as a pawn and did horrible things. Then she makes the conscious choice to do what she can with what she has now.”  
Steve’s voice was hard. “Correct me if I’m wrong, soldier, but it seems to me that brainwashing doesn’t have two wildly different definitions. And if that’s the case, then you are doing one of two things. You—and S.H.I.E.L.D.—are either being unbelievably soft on Agent Romanoff—“  
“—like Hell!” Clint blurted out involuntarily—  
“—or,” Steve continued, “—you are being unbelievably hard on yourself. It’s got to be one or the other. So, you tell me. Which one is it?”  
Clint’s fist clenched so hard blood dripped from the damaged knuckles onto the mat.  
“Tasha sent you here.” he growled.  
Steve shrugged. “She’s been worried about you. I wanted to help. Back to my question. Should you treat Natasha the same way you’ve been treating yourself?” He met Clint’s glare with a steely gaze all his own, and Clint realized, for himself, that Coulson had been right.  
You didn’t mess around with Captain America. On or off the battlefield.  
Clint considered the point for a long moment, then twitched a shoulder, feeling some of the tension drain out of him as he did so.  
“Well, when you put it like that,” he mumbled, and Steve’s eyes gleamed.  
“I know it’s not easy to see things sometimes.” he said kindly. “But she said you were honest, and that you’d listen if it was someone other than her who pointed it out to you.”  
Clint grunted. “Bet she told you I was pigheaded too.”  
Steve hid a smile. “She may have mentioned something. Also said you were one of the best men she’d ever worked with. Worth the trouble, were her exact words.” Clint tried to hide his involuntary smile, but didn’t hide it well. To compensate, he said gruffly,  
“You do know she’s a spy, right? That misdirection and misinformation are her actual livelihood? So how do you know that she’s right?”  
Steve quirked an eyebrow, then grinned back at him, reaching up and unhooking his punching bag from the ceiling. “She’s right about one other thing too. I think we’ll get along fine.”  
“That’s good news, sir. I’d hate for the other fellows at mess to find out I’d gotten my tail kicked by a man old enough to my grandfather.”  
Steve chuckled as he slung the bag over his shoulder and turned to leave. “Definitely get along fine.”

 


	6. Clint

Natasha didn’t know where Clint was.  
Usually, that wasn’t a problem. Usually, they were on mission or in the Tower, and she always knew he would show up at the right time, in the right place, in the right way. Like Murphy’s Law, except the inverse.  
But this time…this time, the Tower had been invaded and they’d been taken down like ninepins. Some creeper calling himself “The Collector” had portalled straight into the Tower and targeted every one of their weaknesses. Apparently he’d been studying them and wanted to add them to his “collection”, whatever the hell that was about. Something about them being “unique in the universe”.  
And Clint still wasn’t here.  
Tony was still swearing about the flagrant security breach, whenever he could get breath enough from having his reactor’s energy siphoned off. The Collector had taken each one of the Avengers captive with insulting ease—not even hurting them, which somehow made it worse from a professional pride standpoint—and had pinioned each of them—along with Pepper—in some sort of organic-techno-webbing of his own design.  
In the main room of Avengers Tower.  
He was also narcissistic enough to broadcast these lovely happenings on every international news network.  
On Christmas Eve.  
“You know, I’m sure the Western Hemisphere would much rather be watching “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Natasha told the Collector, in her very nicest tones. Pepper, dangling over by Tony, looked at her wide-eyed. She knew her friend well enough to know that Natasha’s “polite voice” meant that somewhere in the Russian steppes a six-foot deep hole was being dug for the person she was talking to.  
“Yeah,” Tony added, “instead of all of us us being captured by some cheap aluminum Mirkwood spider knockoffs while you fire up your thinking with portals thing again.” He wiggled his wrists—currently extended above his head by the strange amalgamation of wiring and webbing that the spider bots had used—in an earnest attempt at making quotation marks. It was a valiant effort, but a futile one.  
“Oh, I think they’re interested in this by now.” the white-haired would be fashionista said. He waved a beringed hand. “I started broadcasting at the beginning, when the boring one—you know, glasses? Some sort of primitive weapon?—got tossed off the top of the Tower.” He sighed. “The Twitter feedback alone was devastating. Who knew the human could be so interesting?” As he said it, he played the feedback on the conference room monitor for them.  
He wasn’t lying.  
The feed was obviously from their own security cameras.  
And the timestamp was seven minutes ago.  
And Clint was already dead.  
The scuttling, spidery robot things the Collector used had dropped in on Clint from above as he came in from landing the AvenJet. Since the invading robots wielded Asgardian-level technology and were the size of large attack dogs, it hadn’t been close to a fair fight. He’d managed to electrocute one, set fire to another, and shoot a third one into the wall—simultaneously triggering the Tower-wide alarm that had let them know something was wrong—  
But—then a fourth had simply scanned him—and chirruped a signal—  
A fifth had grabbed him from behind by the neck—with those creepy tentacles that had steel pinchers for claws—and yanked him six feet off the ground—  
Then a sixth had reached out and casually snapped his arm—his bow arm—in two with a sickening crunch—  
And then the little beasts had thrown him straight through the docking bay windows and into the night beyond.  
The detail on Tony’s screens was microscopic. Natasha could see beads of blood on the glass where Clint had gone through, the holes’ edges jaggedly yawning into the midwinter sky. The rest of the glass had followed him out into the night, over the frozen lights of the city and into the falling snow.  
He’d looked stunned. Surprised, mostly.  
He hadn’t had time for anything else.  
The video loop stopped. Repeated itself.  
Natasha felt her stomach drop and, just for a second, she stopped fighting against the mess holding her in place. Beside her, she felt Steve tense like a coiled spring. Thor growled something deep and terrifying. Tony stopped talking abruptly, and his eyes had gone iron hard. Hulk, for once, did not immediately roar, but his huge green fists clenched so tightly the knuckles cracked like rifle fire. Pepper was quiet. Too quiet. It was her angry So-help-me-God-I-am-going-to- _kill_ -you quiet. Their captor stopped and looked at them.  
“I apologize, truly,” he said, sounding slightly aggrieved. “If he’d been important I would have kept him around. But, honestly, all I really want is the full set of you powered ones. And frankly, humans are a dime a dozen, and he was simply superfluous—speaking of which—“  
And he motioned towards Pepper, who went pale. The spider bots scuttled towards her, and Tony swore at the top of his voice as he tried to reach her, but couldn’t—the wiring around him—around his heart—constricted and froze him in place, no matter how much he threw himself against it. Hulk roared, Thor snarled, Natasha cursed in Russian, and for once, Steve didn’t say anything about language.  
And then the robots exploded. All of them. Simultaneously.  
Tasha felt like cheering. She knew shrapnel arrows when she saw them.  
The Collector looked up. The remaining Avengers did as well.  
Natasha tossed her long hair back from her face and grinned as she followed the line of sight from the downed bots to the alcove twenty feet away and thirty feet above them.  
“Sometimes it’s nice to be overlooked.” her partner snarked, voice raspy and strained. The Collector raised an eyebrow. “How did you do that?” he asked.  
“This?”  
Clint twitched one shoulder—the one he was holding stiffly out from his side—the one with something jagged and dripping peeking out through the forearm—and bounced the arrow-he’d-turned-into-a-spear carefully in his other hand, weighing it. Several others were piled neatly in front of him.  
“Trade secret.” he announced. Then he sighted down at their captor—his glasses were missing but that didn’t matter, not for him—and when he next spoke, his voice was far less flippant. “Now let them go. Or,” he bounced the spear again, “this next one pins you to the wall like a bug. Television ratings be—” he caught sight of Cap’s face and hastily switched words—“hanged.” He coughed, once, but the spear never wavered.  
The Collector tapped his teeth with one finger, then waved his hand again. “I don’t think so.” Faint noises emanated from the Tower around them, growing stronger by the second.  
Scuttling noises.  
Tasha saw Clint’s expression stiffen and he drew back the spear to throw.  
The other bots got to him first.

  
She was never sure who screamed louder—her or Pepper—when Clint crashed onto the floor in front of them. The bots had swarmed him from all sides, scuttling through the ventilation ducts and up the walls. Perched as he was in the upper alcove, he’d had nowhere to go and no room to fight.  
He’d tried jumping and landing in a roll the way Coulson had trained them. But there’d been three spider bots on him by then, and he’d only been able to sort of curl up before he’d hit the floor in front of his friends with a nasty crack, and she’d thought one leg had just sort of—twisted—and then the bots were all over him and she couldn’t even see him anymore—  
She was fairly upset by now and had let everyone know in loud, angry Russian. But the Collector had shouted even louder than Thor and Tony at the bots, telling them to be gentle since he’d decided he wanted this one alive for now.  
Tasha tried to trip him as he walked past her towards Clint. But she, like all of the other Avengers, was completely caught in the Mirkwood spider shist that Tony had mocked earlier, hands and feet held out in an X shape and encased in otherworldly webbing and wires. She made the effort anyway, but got off-handedly patted on the cheek for her trouble. She tried to bite him, missed, then tossed back her red long hair—the strands that weren’t stuck in webbing—and snarled outright at their captor. He ignored her.  
“Well, well, well.” the Collector said as the bots scuttled away from Clint. They’d woven some sort of web around him as they had the others, hoisting him up so he hung suspended mostly from his wrists—oh, great, including his bad one—at an uncomfortable angle, feet also trapped and suspended a good six inches above the floor.  
“I suppose I was wrong. You do have something…but what is it?” the white haired man mused. “My Scanners couldn’t find anything in particular. And they are, not to boast, quite exceptional. I made them myself.”  
“Well, there’s your problem.” Clint wheezed.  
The Collector frowned, dark eyes narrowing. He waved his hand again, as if conducting an invisible symphony. A Scanner—Natasha guessed that’s what the Mirkwood bots were called—scuttled up and presented him with a small, thin knife. He took it with a studied air, then turned back to Clint.  
“Very few of my specimens have answered my questions as you just did.” the Collector informed him gravely. His voice was flat, disinterested. “The last one had his tongue displayed next to his enclosure.” He sounded regretful. “Unfortunately, he did not live for much longer afterwards. Quite a waste of resources.”  
Clint cleared his throat and tried to shrug, but stopped short when the motion pulled at the wires wrapping around his broken arm. His face paled and he stopped breathing for a moment.  
“Oh, wow.” he rasped, finally, voice spitting defiance. “Gosh, then. Sure. If you’re gonna be all threatening about it.”  
The Collector’s eyes flashed.  
“I’m so glad you understand.” He said acidly. “But before we move on—“ the knife flicked a little in his hand, “I would like you to answer a few quick questions. Starting with, why, specifically, you are a part of this…” he gestured at the others—“group. Even though you started off a lackey of Laufeyson. And not even that. A mind-controlled lackey of Laufeyson.”  
Clint’s expression emptied for an instant. The fierce smile he summoned up the next moment did not entirely reach his eyes. Not if you knew him, anyway. “Because I’m just that awesome.” he said, as if it was obvious. The Collector gave him an indulgent smile.  
“That’s not a full answer. And I know—and don’t much appreciate—that you’re making me loo—trying to make me look— foolish in the eyes of your world. I’m a man who values my reputation.”  
He gestured at the little blinking camera lights tucked into the spiders’ eyes and nestled in Tony’s control panel. Clint’s trademark smirk—Tasha recognized it as the one he always put on when he was worried, or tired, or upset, or just pissed—appeared.  
“That last part’s your problem.” Clint told him. “And it was a full answer. It had a noun and a verb and everythi—“  
The Collector’s expression tightened and his eyes flicked from Clint, to the team, to the cameras, then back again. Then, without changing expression, he took a quick step forward. And clasped his beringed hand around the back of Clint’s neck, as if he were greeting an old friend.  
And thrust the knife into Clint’s stomach so hard that the needle point shot through the back of Clint’s old leather jacket, metal glinting cold and red in the light from the monitors.

  
Clint’s smirk vanished as his breath left him in a gasp and his words were cut off. Everyone else’s reactions were almost as quick. Tasha shrieked, Pepper cried out, Tony called the Collector a name Steve hadn’t known existed, and Thor and Hulk both roared so loud that the building’s supports shook around them. Steve snarled, gritted his teeth, and renewed his efforts to free himself with a vengeance. Tasha could see crimson oozing out from under the wires holding his wrists. She felt her own arms starting to bruise and the skin around the wrists crack and bleed as the restraints held. No good. The Collector had planned for super soldier strength when he’d grabbed her and Steve—whatever boosters they’d given her when she was still in the Red Room still weren’t enough—of course it wouldn’t help just when she needed it most—  
“Prove your worth and I will consider repairing the damage.” the Collector said icily. He waited for a needlessly dramatic moment while Clint tried to gulp in air. “Well?” he asked, bitingly. Clint didn’t answer—he couldn’t—who could?—  
“You want answers, I can give you answers.” Steve interrupted sharply. “Talk to me. I’ll tell you why he’s—“  
“No, talk to me, Afro-head,” that was Tony, “I’ll tell you why he’s on the roster—“  
“Boys, please,” Tasha cut over Hulk’s inarticulate spittings of rage and Thor’s vehement Asgardian—their resident medieval buddy sometimes lapsed into his native tongue when particularly stressed—“I’m his parter, I know why—“  
The Collector whipped round and roared at them, the first time he’d ever raised his voice above polite conversation.  
“THE REST OF YOU BE QUIET!!!” he shouted. Given that he’d just finished twisting a good four inches of steel out of Clint’s guts—and was still worryingly close to him—the rest of the team—grudgingly—shut up. Tasha made herself clinically note the placement of the wound, as well as the blood starting to slide out the side of Clint’s mouth. For the medics, once they got here.  
Speaking of medics, where the hell was S.H.I.E.L.D.?  
“I don’t think you understand how this works.” the Collector told Clint, calmly, after they’d quieted down. He used the dripping tip of the knife to force Clint’s chin up so that their eyes were on the same level. “I ask questions. You answer them. Or—“ he smiled sweetly, as if a thought had struck him. “I start taking fingers from your friends.”  
Clint’s face was drawn and grey, his eyes muzzily tracking something off to the side. However, at the Collector’s words, his gaze blazed back into focus, and he locked eyes with the man. And, just for a second, Nat—and the rest of them—saw the danger that lived far back in Clint’s eyes. The danger, and the anger, that most people didn’t see. Never saw. Until they’d done something bad enough to earn it—and by then it was too late.  
Then Clint smiled. The danger didn’t go away.  
It actually got worse.  
The Collector saw it as well. And tightened his grip on the knife. Clint cleared his throat.  
“Bullshit.” he said calmly, albeit with some difficulty. The Collector blinked.  
“What?”  
“Bull. Shit.” Clint repeated, obviously forcing the words out. “You won’t—can’t—damage them. Ruin your—real live action figure—collection—wha—whatever. And—friendly tip?—I wouldn’t touch—Pepper—p—Potts—if I were—you. The one and only—Iron Man—would lose his mind. And he’s not easy—to have on your hands even—even—when he isn’t—crazy.”  
The Collector’s lips tightened, and Natasha saw Clint’s words had struck home. The man waved his hand airily again, the classy gesture at odds with the cruel lines around his mouth.  
“I’ve changed my mind. I may need all of them unharmed—for a while, at least—but I certainly don’t need all of you.” Another, smaller Scanner crawled up, thin, fine pincer hands whirring and twisting.  
“Just your eyes, I think.”  
Clint’s lips pressed together as he watched the vibrating claws inch closer and his eyes flicked to Tasha’s for a brief instant. Then he swallowed slightly, deliberately looked back at their captor, and raised an eyebrow quizzically.  
“What’s wrong with—your own?” he asked.  
The Collector studied him, something like absolute amazement on his cultured face. “Do you ever stop talking?” he wondered aloud.  
“Nuh—nope.” Clint replied, then swallowed, hard, and pressed back as far as he could go against his bonds, trying to avoid the hungry claws that stretched up towards him. For the briefest moment his angrily sarcastic veneer slipped, revealing pain and fear beneath. His friends saw it.  
So did the Collector. Who smiled.  
Clint grimaced, then coughed, once, in a pitiable attempt at bravado.  
“Um—before we go any further with this—there’s one thing I can tell you—“  
The Collector raised an eyebrow, mirroring Clint’s previous expression, and waited, saying nothing. One of the Scanner’s claws clamped down. Started dragging thin, slow, scarlet furrows through Clint’s left eyebrow, one millimeter at a time. Clint shuddered, squeezed his eyes shut, and obviously forced himself to gulp back a howl of absolute terror. The claw paused for an instant on its downward path.  
“Well?” the Collector prodded.  
“Can’t tell you if—I’m screaming—my head off, can I?”  
Clint’s voice was light again, but Tasha could feel fear radiating off him like a wave. She didn’t blame him. It was coming from her too. It was coming from all of them.  
The Collector rolled his eyes, waved a hand. The whirring stopped, the arm inched away. Clint let out a short sigh of relief and cracked one eye open to warily watch the Collector’s next move. He looked sick. And tired. And awful.  
“Uh.” he began, voice cracking slightly.  
“Don’t bother. I see what it is.” their captor sighed, boredom lacing his tone. “You may be an excellent marksman, dedicated and quite…stubborn, but you’re an average human being, after all. You just use humor as a—what do you humans call it—a defense mechanism. To cope with things wildly out of your control.” He sighed, sounding disappointed. “Typical. Not very special after all.”  
“Yeah, that’s—true—” Clint said weakly. “But there’s—one other—thing you should…“  
His voice trailed off. The Collector waited.  
Clint tried to keep talking, he really did, Nat could see him trying to form the words, but his breathing was labored now, each gasp an effort.  
The other man’s mouth pursed and he made a sharp motion with his hand. The whirring started up. The Scanner started dragging downwards again—Clint flinched away from it, head twisting to the side, both eyes squeezing shut in a futile effort to stop the Scanner from taking them. Nat wanted to scream at the Collector to stop, but he was focused on Clint, trying to hear—  
Come on Clint, say something—  
“It’s—it’s like this…” Clint wheezed. “There’s this…uh, thing…” His voice trailed off. The Collector huffed in annoyance, stopped the Scanner again, just before it reached Clint’s eyelid. Then the Collector leaned in closer.  
And Clint’s eyes snapped fully open.

  
He grinned—really grinned, the same brilliant smile he’d given Natasha back in that Roman alley, all those years ago—and bulled his head forward into the Collector’s aquiline nose, breaking it with a sharp snap that cracked the paralyzed silence of the room. In the same motion, he forced his good arm out of the webbing with a grunt—Nat realized with distant horror that Clint must have been working it free the entire time—and grabbed the Collector’s beringed hand with his good thumb and forefinger, fingers clumsy but still strong.  
“Humor is a defense mechanism.” he grated. “But it’s also one _hell_ of a distraction.”  
With that, he yanked one of the rings off the Collector’s finger and, fumbling, flipped it onto his own thumb. The white-haired man had fallen to his knees from the pain. He gasped, clutched at his bleeding nose, fell to all fours, and scuttled away from his prisoner.  
And away from the waiting Scanner that was looking between the two men frantically, trying to figure out what to do.  
“The ring controls them, doesn’t it.” Clint said, normally friendly face hard and grim. The smile—harder now—remained on his face, but his usually kind expression had utterly left his eyes.  
“Well, boys—fetch.”  
So saying, he curled his bloody hand, twisted the ring against his index finger, and thrust his arm towards the cowering man on the floor, perfectly mirroring their captor’s own gestures. The Scanner—and all its fellows—sprang after their former master in a swirling mass of twisted metal and howling arms. The Collector screamed, once. And vanished beneath the swarm.  
Literally—vanished.  
There was a thin snap and a sharp smell of ozone filled the air. The Collector had opened—and fallen—back into his portal, the Scanners following hard on his tail. Every single one. In the beat of silence that followed, Nat could hear the whump whump whump of Tricarrier engines and the shouting of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents as they breached the Tower doors far below. From the stomping sounds above there were more rappelling down the roof. They must have been trying to get in the whole time. As if to confirm her hypothesis, just then, from outside, a sharp flicker of coruscating light ribboned out from the Tower in a burst of eye-blinding color and vanished with a snap into the night sky. Some kind of shield the Collector had made had stopped their friends from getting in.  
But they were coming in now. In droves.  
Somehow this knowledge still didn’t make her feel any better.  
Clint wheezed at the blackened hole in the flooring where the Collector had gone, letting his arm fall limply to his side. He shook his head and looked over at his friends, grinning hollowly, voice a little bit thicker than it had been a moment before. But his eyes were clearer.  
“Heh-heh-heh. What a…sucker. What a…maroon. What an im…imbecile. I mean, Mirkwood spiders? And coming right up? To me? Come on, really? He was a…dork.”  
“Nice one, Maximus Decimus Aurelius.” Tony said, far too quickly for it to be funny or meant as an actual joke. His words were lighthearted, but the tone was a hairsbreadth away from utter panic, and his sharp grey eyes were fixed on the blood seeping down the front of Clint’s shirt. “You feel like cutting us down so we can start celebrating?”  
Even as he spoke, their resident mad genius was trying to jump up and down to dislodge the wires running out of his chest. Pepper warned, “Sweetie, be careful, I think I can get that for you—just—just hold on a second—“ Hulk and Thor were tearing at the wires holding each other up—wow, Hulk’d started using his teeth—that was new—and Nat could feel the wires holding her hands and legs starting to loosen. The absence of the Collector’s tech must be slowly breaking down the bindings. Steve was kicking one leg free even as they spoke.  
Clint looked at Tony as if he’d suggested something feasible. “Sure.” he said easily. “One sec…I’ll…get ya out.” He grunted, started to reach across and up with his free hand towards his one still tightly tied wrist…and went sheet white. Red started spreading faster on the ruined remains of his leather jacket. “Hahaha, nooooo,” he said, as if to himself. He grimaced, looked around…and then started twisting at his broken arm to follow through on his promise, holding his free hand hard against his stomach as he did. “Ergfth.” he said between tries, sweat beading at his temples. “Eckfth—“  
“Whoa,” Tony said, stopping mid-bounce. “That’s—uh—hardcore—but, uh—Clint, I was—kidding—dude—“  
“Those wires are…killing…you…not able to reach…all of them…yourself, man.” Clint said tiredly.  
“Watch me, Katniss.“ Tony retorted. “And Pepper’s doing fine. Relax, for Pete’s sake.”  
“Don’t…call me…Katniss.” Clint said, almost plaintively. “And Pepper can’t see them…all from where she is…that red one curls around in…front, tangles up with the blue…one on the…side…” he told her. “Purple one’s—knotted, too.”  
Pepper squeaked in delight from behind Tony. “Thanks Clint!” her voice piped. “I think I’ve got it now—“  
Tony rolled his eyes exaggeratedly but his face was pale. “Show off.” he told his friend. Clint snorted and kept up his efforts, albeit slightly slower than before. A lot slower, actually.  
“Tony, don’t encourage him!” Tasha said, her voice tight and fast. “Clint does this, he gets all pumped up on adrenaline and he plows through the mission and ignores basic warning signs until he just falls over and goes into shock—“  
She (ineffectively) tried to kick out at her partner, but her stupid fuzzy socks were still stuck in the webbing and he was dangling just out of reach. Clint coughed, winked at her, and kept up his efforts.  
Natasha howled in utter frustration.  
“Clint goddammit stop moving, your arm is broken and you were just stabbed—“  
Clint tried to smirk at her, but instead just looked sick. “Look who’s talking…Lady Peril. Remember that time in—Berlin—when you broke your leg—three places—we had to…” His voice faltered, trailed off.  
He blinked, once, twice, three times. Something like horror suddenly flashed across his face as he stared wide-eyed at Tasha—no, not just at her, past her, through her. At something—or someone—that wasn’t there.

  
And this time it wasn’t an act.  
Then he saw her again. Relief flickered in his eyes for an instant, but then absolute, gut-wrenching terror ripped it away.  
“Tasha? Oh, God, Tasha. Tasha, run,” he said, and his voice was harsh and hoarse and scared, so unlike his usual bantering that Nat thought for a second she’d misheard. She stared at him in surprise.  
“You gotta run, Nat.” He said, even more desperately. “Get out—get away—he’s—he’s coming—he’s furious at you cuz you fi—figured it out—“ He started ripping at his bad arm frantically, seemingly mindless of the pain it must be causing him.  
“Clint, stop, calm down. What—“ Nat stopped, started again. “I figured what out?” she asked, as gently as she could. Everyone else had stopped talking, almost stopped moving—and was staring at them.  
Clint shook his head desperately, still trying to wrest himself free from the entangling web.  
“No—no—no—Nat—just—just run, all right? You found—out about the—the Hulk and the, and the Helicarrier—you tricked him inta—tellin you his plan—Nat, stop talkin and just run—please—“ He cried out and jerked suddenly, away from someone or something only he could see. His free hand clawed at his head and he pressed the heel of it hard against one temple, as if to keep something out.  
Or to keep something in.  
His next words hissed out from between clenched teeth and he glanced at her sideways, jerkily, as if even that tiny motion pained him—  
“Please, Tasha—”  
He was practically begging, now, terror thickening his voice, and Clint had never sounded like that, not ever, not once since she’d known him—  
“You gotta get out—L-L-Loki said you were n—n—next, said he’d make m—make me—you gotta—gotta get out—“  
He broke off, snarled something furiously at the drywall near Tasha’s head, and shot her a look of pure desperation and despair.  
“‘I—I can’t—I can’t stop him, Tasha—“ he gasped, and his voice cracked slightly as he said her name. “—H—he’s got some sort of m-mind control—s-s-scepter—thing—and I’m just this—weapon—and I c-can’t—I’m stuck, Tasha, I’m stuck and I can’t stop him from—just, for the love of God, Tasha, run—”  
His voice broke off and his hand clutched at his head, face pale, eyes wild, hair slick with sweat, chest heaving for air that wouldn’t come. The room fell silent for a half a heartbeat. Thor spoke first—the big Asgardian sounded scared, but also confused. “But—Loki is—is in Asgard—“  
Tony hissed, “Aw-shit-Clint’s-already-in-shock—” and jumped and down even harder. Pepper said something sharp and he stopped, hands shaking impatiently as she finished unhooking his arc reactor from the snares the Collector had designed. The others redoubled their efforts as well. Nat felt one—two—fingers dislocate as she finished twisting her left hand free. She didn’t freaking care.  
She was not going to watch her partne—  
— _Clint_ —  
—die, like _that_ , five feet in front of her.  
Clint’s breath was coming in harsh, painful gasps, spatters of blood flicking into the webbing around him. His free hand dropped to his side, and his head started to follow, but he gulped horribly for air and fought his way back up again, eerily, desperately silent as his eyes darted wildly around the Tower to check for multiple enemies. They widened as he took in his arm’s compound fracture, darted down to the strange angle of one leg, and registered the blood spreading across the front of his jacket.  
It must have been a few incredibly agonizing and horribly disorientating seconds.  
His bewildered gaze met Nat’s. He slowly blinked crimson out of one eye. “Ow.” he said blankly.  
Then his eyes rolled back into his head.  
And his head finished falling down onto his chest.  
Nat felt her stomach twist.  
“Clint, stay with me.” Steve ordered, and the sharp edge of fear in his voice made it louder than it usually was. But Clint didn’t respond. Even after the webbing finally collapsed around them, and Nat had clawed her way out of the pile of gooey elongating threads, and just managed to soften Clint’s fall onto the hard floor of the Tower, he still didn’t wake up.  
“Clint,” she said into his ear, trying to simultaneously hold his head up, keep his airway clear, and keep him out of the rest of the clinging mess of slime and wires, “Clint, come on. The medics are just outside—“ she cleared her throat unnecessarily. At least she told herself it was unnecessarily. “Clint, I need you to…” Cleared it again.  
Steve staggered through the mess of webbing towards them, shouting orders for Hulk and Thor to clear a way to the doors. Distant thwud thwud thwuds and the shouted orders of S.H.I.E.L.D. troops made their muffled way through the heavy steel plating. The two muscled Avengers did an abrupt about face—they’d been trying to rip consoles apart to get over to their teammates—and directed a considerable amount of angry effort at the shist twisting through the Avengers Tower. While they wreaked havoc on alien technology, Tony scrambled under and through a bunch of ropy loops and almost tripped Steve as he half-jumped, half-slid over a control panel to where Nat and Clint were hunched. Tony finished army-crawling his way through the mess to the three of them and Pepper scrambled along in his wake. She was breathing hard and clutching a First-Aid kit in one scraped hand. She opened it and fumbled through the contents, hands shaking as she grabbed bandages and pushed them into Steve and Tony’s hands.   “Here, try—try this—they’re not much but maybe we can—“  
Tony, for once, said nothing, mouth tight and eyes scared, and followed Steve’s directions as they tried to staunch the bleeding on the wounds they could reach. Nat tried to see if Clint was still breathing. She thought so. She hoped so. She really, really, really hoped so…  
“Nat…“ Clint’s voice was weak with pain. Nat stopped trying to figure out how to do a no hands version of mouth to mouth and looked down at him. She was cradling his head in her lap and keeping one hand cupped along the side of his face, her good thumb stroking away the blood trickling down his chin. Her other hand was pressed hard against the wound in his side, fingers growing sticky and clotted. And so very, very red.  
“Yes, Clint?” Keep him talking, keep him responding—  
Only one eye was open. And it wasn’t seeing her. It was scared, and lost, and very far away. So was his voice.  
“I think—I think Loki—I—think I killed—N—Nat—I—I’m s—sorry, Nat—I’m s-so-so—sorr—“  
“No, stupid, I’m right here.” she said, her gentle tone belying the roughness of her words. “You didn’t kill me. I gave you a minor concussion, and then we went and kicked Loki’s little Slytherin ass in New York, remember?”  
No response. No answering smirk or spark of recognition.  
Shit, he was pretty far gone this time.  
Still, he’d had worse.  
She thought.  
“You’re not Loki’s.” she told him. “You’re not his.”  
Still nothing.  
He was still lost.  
He was still scared.  
She cleared her throat stubbornly. And remembered.  
“You’re thinking like Loki.” She told him. “Think S.H.I.E.L.D.” Something—recognition, remembrance?—clicked far back in Clint’s gaze and he returned to her, at least partially.  
“S-s-so long as it’s n-not—H—H—Hydra.” he replied, voice thin, barely there. He’d started to shake, from cold or exhaustion or blood loss she wasn’t sure. Dammit, one more thing to make sure the medics knew about. Nat snorted and, since she couldn’t hug him or smack him or—or anything else—without making things worse—settled for smoothing his hair back from his forehead and out of his eyes.  
“I’m not leaving you.” she said quietly, firmly.  
Clint tried to smile back at her. He almost managed it.  
“I—don’t—want—to leave—you—either.”  
Tasha frowned at his words, tilted her head to one side. Forced herself to smile, albeit wobbily.  
“You going somewhere?” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. Clint grinned fleetingly at that, at her laughable attempt at his sort of humor.  
“Heh.” he said. “ ‘re smilin…that’s…good.” He said nothing more, but his good hand had found one of hers and he grasped it, holding her gaze with his own.  
Then he sighed, once. His eye slid shut. The pressure around her bloody fingers lessened.  
And he was still.  
“Clint.” she said sharply. “…Clint?”  
Nothing.  
“Clint?!!—“  
Behind them the doors burst inward with a shrieking sound. The paramedics rushed in—or, in one case, was thrown over a huge web by a giant green hand—and Tasha was half-hugged, half-dragged to the side. Suddenly—how had that happened—she found herself in the supporting arms of two people, an ashen-faced Tony and a shaking Pepper. Steve, grim-faced, was behind the two of them. Then a bewildered Asgardian god and a screaming monster joined the circle, and Tasha buried her face in Pepper’s shoulder as the medics frantically tried to save their friend.

 

****  
“…and then he says, “Heeeeey, Rickoff—“ and there was this simply awful burst of static from the comms—and when they came back on you could hear these crrkkking sounds—“  
Natasha made the appropriate sound effects and continued her story—“—and I could hear Coulson demanding his status report, and Clint radioed back and said that yes, the traitor Agent Rickoff had been correct and there were no longer KGB operatives in Budapest. Coulson asked if there had been any KGB operatives in Budapest, and Clint said that the damn coms were so full of static he could scarcely hear him.”  
Someone—Pepper, probably, giggled. Clint would have smiled but his face seemed to be frozen in place, somehow. Not that it was painful, particularly. Just very fuzzy. The only thing he knew for certain was that he could hear was Nat’s voice. It was a nice voice. He should tell her so sometime.  
“Coulson,” Nat continued, “without missing a beat, apologizes for the technological difficulties and promises he’ll get IT on it without delay. He then tells Clint there’s a jet ready and set to go in the wood a hundred yards from his current location. That’s about the time when what’s left of Rickoff comes sailing through the observation window—I mean, straight up, sailing—actually airborne—and skids to a stop at my feet in broken glass and shell casings.”  
She sighed, almost happily. “Next thing I see is Clint jumping over the wall, into the room, coming to get me…and, Pepper? You know how he’s always grinning or snarking or making a joke?” Pepper made a sound of agreement. “Well, this time he wasn’t.” Pepper gave a little gasp.  
“Oh, my.”  
Natasha made a noise of agreement—it sounded like she was drinking coffee or something—and he could just envision her eyes snapping as she recalled the mission. He’d actually tried to forget Budapest, as much as possible, but some things just stayed with you.  
Like your partner going missing when she’d stepped out for coffee. Discovering that her A.O., Ricoff, was a mole in S.H.I.E.L.D. as a result. Going rogue to find said partner. Finding her two days later in a ratty abandoned warehouse. And seeing her getting the daylights beaten out of her for leaving the Russian underworld. And—especially—for joining S.H.I.E.L.D.  
The memory of the bruises—and the burns—and the cuts—that they’d given her had hurt him too. Long after they’d healed and faded for her. Which was stupid. But true.  
When he’d seen her for the first time since the grab, he’d never been that relieved.  
And he’d never been that angry.   And hadn’t been that angry since.  
He was sort of glad, to be honest. He didn’t want killing an entire warehouse full of men to become a matter of routine for him. In Budapest he’d needed to do it to get to her and get her out again.  
That part he’d really tried to forget. He thought she hadn’t known. She had been pretty out of it.  
“—was pretty scary.” Tasha continued. “I mean, he comes through the window and he’s in some sort of special black ops uniform, and half of it’s covered in chemical burns and the other half’s dripping blood, and the only thing you can really see beneath the gear and the guns and the camouflage paint are his eyes, and—and—I mean, honestly, all I could think about was that I was really, really, really glad he was on my side. Then he got me out, picked me up like a five year old, and took me out through the corridor with the least carnage. It was kind of sweet—he talked to me the whole time, sort of automatically, I guess—he must have thought I was out instead of paralyzed. There were still like, fifteen dead guys in each hallway, even though he tried avoiding the worst bits, but still…trying to avoid the worst of it was sweet all the same.” There was a pause while Pepper “awwwed” and spoons clinked against ceramic cups. Tasha spoke again. “Oh. And after the mission was over, I’m released from infirmary and I find out he’s still in hospital. Ended up staying three days longer than me. Some kind of weaponized virus he’d caught because he gave me the last working oxygen mask. The jerk. That’s when I made the rule.”  
“Rule?”  
“Every time he’s away for more than 48 hours without telling me beforehand, I steal his stuff.” Tasha said, sounding smug. “He’s got the best collection of t-shirts. I haven’t had to go shopping in years.”  
“Does Clint do the same thing?”  
Tasha made a noncommittal noise. “No. He just adds another stuffed animal to my collection when he thinks I’m not looking. Usually so I trip over it in the morning. Last time it was a pegasus as big as my bed.” Pepper chuckled as Tasha continued. “You know, I think most people underestimate him? Well, most of the time—that is, people always see him being an obnoxious smartass—“  
Clint wanted to protest but found he couldn’t—oh well, he didn’t really care about it anyway—  
“—but everybody seems to forget that he’s like that one spy everyone talks about—Jack Bond?—”  
“—James Bond.” Pepper corrected, her voice smiling.  
“Yeah, right, James Bond—except, I don’t know, more like Indiana Jones. Indiana Jones’ mouthy attitude, James Bond skills. And phenomenal aim. Did you know S.H.I.E.L.D. doesn’t let people pick their own weapons unless you prove impeccable skill with it? There’s this terribly rigorous test you have to take when you graduate training academy. Clint grabbed a bow and passed the tests in three minutes. Before orientation.”  
“Wow.” Pepper was seriously impressed. More clinking of spoons on ceramic mugs. When she next spoke, her voice was serious.  
“Well…I don’t think anyone will underestimate him again after yesterday. On Earth or anywhere else.”  
Tasha’s voice tensed slightly. “What does that mean?”  
Pepper sighed. “Tony dissected the cameras. You know him, he bullied five from S.H.I.E.L.D.’s secure facilities and started tinkering. Said that the video had quantum-code capacity. Tony speak for a universal broadcasting system.”  
Tasha sucked in a breath. “Oh. So….so we were seen by everyone? As in, everyone in the galaxy?”  
“Maybe even further.” Pepper sighed, voice turning wry. “Tony wanted to send out a 50 million dollar reward poster for the Collector’s head and a Morse coded middle finger to the Chitari, but Fury talked him out of it. Said he wanted to design the poster himself.”  
“Heh.” Clint croaked. Pepper eeped and there was the grating of chairs being shoved back. Footsteps hurried over. Tasha abruptly appeared in his line of vision, blinking hard, pushing her long hair away from her eyes with one hand. She looked tired, and was wearing his old “THEY HAVE A CAVE TROLL” t-shirt, but her eyes were soft and—relieved about something?—huh—  
“Hey.” she said briefly.  
“Hey.”  
“You slept for a real long time.” Tasha told him. Her hand found one of his and squeezed it, gently. Clint winked at her and squeezed back. She tilted her head to one side, a slight smile in her eyes, the rest of her expression almost returning to what he called her “resting poker” face. But not quite.  
And then she—absentmindedly, it seemed—swept his hair back from his forehead. Like she’d been doing it a lot recently.  
Clint blinked when he realized he sort of liked it when she did that.  
He sort of liked it a lot.  
He saw that Pepper was beaming as she watched them. And realized he was grinning like a loon.  
But Tasha was talking now and he should pay attention.  
“Tony’s pissed.” she was telling him bluntly. “He wanted to open presents but Steve made him wait.”  
“Yeah, jerkface.” Tony’s voice filtered in through the pleasant haze surrounding Clint’s senses. Something bright and shiny was shoved between him and Natasha and wiggled around, sounds clinking inside it. It sounded like more shrapnel arrowheads. Or the body armor Tony had been nagging him to try for the last two months. Or both. “Here’s yours. Hurry up and open it.”  
Clint blinked slowly. “Wha?” he asked. Nat batted aside the silver-wrapped present and glared over her shoulder. “Timing, Tony.” she said severely, and from out of sight Tony groaned theatrically.  
“GUYS!” he shouted. “CLINT’S AWAKE!!”  
Clint blinked again, his vision clearing. He was in a hospital room of some sort. No—he was in the Tower’s infirmary. Which had been decorated—almost suffocatingly so—with Christmas lights. And tinsel. And garlands. And ornaments. And little kid drawings. There was even a huge tree in one corner.  
“Ack.” he said, blinking. “How the—what the—“  
“New York.” Natasha said simply. “They wanted to help us celebrate Christmas, I guess. Pepper organized the whole thing. It’s remarkable what you can get done in seventy two hours.”  
“Yeah.” Tony put in. He appeared over Natasha’s shoulder, threw aside the minuscule camera he’d been tinkering with, and shoved his hands in his pockets, looking sharply at Clint. He was dressed in old slacks and a “STAND BACK LOSERS, I’M GOING TO TRY SCIENCE” t-shirt, and his hair was mussed and sticking on end. He looked like he should have been relaxed. But his eyes were a little too bright. Pepper went to stand over by him and tucked one arm reassuringly in hers.  
“We had something good going on in our main room, but some jerkface hacked a portal in it, shoved a bunch of stuff to the other end of space, and kind of burned a hole in the floor.” Tony stopped, considered. “Also it still looks like Mirkwood. A bunch of fifth graders bringing Christmas lights got stuck and it took Hulk an hour and a half to get them all out. They loved it. The kids, I mean. Wouldn’t stop quoting that medieval movie series and pretending to shoot each other with imaginary arrows. They all say hi, by the way. And that most of them want to be you.”  
Clint smirked through his oxygen mask. Oh, he had one on his face. He hadn’t realized that before. “Bet you…loved that.”  
Tony smirked back, relief obvious in his eyes. “Oh, well. A couple of them wanted to be me. So I knew they weren’t all bad.”  
“He’s very glad you’re awake, Clint. We both are.” Pepper put in, smiling. Clint gave her a weak two-fingered salute. “Thanks, Pep.”  
“Clint.” Steve, coming in from the hallway. “Glad to see you’re awake.” He crossed over to the bed, smiling broadly, and patted Clint gently on his good shoulder. “Hey, Cap.” Clint said woozily. “How’s it goin?”  
“Better, now that you’re back with us.” Steve said sincerely. He looked around at the team and lowered his voice slightly. “Doctor Keller’s in the next room. Said he and his team of nurses will be there if we need anything.”  
Clint gave a thumbs up to the doorway where he guessed the doctor might be. “Cool.” he said. He looked around, blinking a little. “Someone please tell me this oxygen mask is optional.” He said, motioning to it with his good hand. Tasha’s hand—which, for some strange but pleasant reason, still had her fingers entwined with his—moved along with his gesture. She smiled at him. “It is. Here, let me help you—“  
Clint was only too glad to get it off. Then he remembered he’d been asking something. ”Where’s—“  
Something big and green shot through the doorway. Which answered his question.  
“Hey, stupid.” Hulk said gruffly, shifting his weight from one bare foot to the other, fingers of one big hand drumming nervously on the foot of the bed. “How ya feelin?”  
“Better.” Clint replied.  
Hulk’s gaze was strangely piercing. “Really?”  
“Better than I—was.” Clint affirmed, giving Hulk a weak but sincere grin. He looked around the room again. “Where’s our—Asgardian?”  
Hulk grinned back. “Gettin’ somethin’.”  
There was a flash of light from the doorway and a strange burning smell. Clint recognized the telltale signs of an Asgardian portal—he’d been in New Mexico, after all—and closed his eyes against the glare. The others didn’t.  
Tony swore and threw one hand up against the glare—“Aw, what the actual hell, Thor, come on, man—“  
“Language—“ Steve said casually—Tasha snorted, Tony glared, and Hulk chuckled—Pepper sighed—  
And Thor arrived in a roll of thunder.  
“HAPPY CHRISTMAS!” he bellowed. “MY MOTHER AND FATHER SEND THIER GREETINGS AS WELL!”  
“It’s Merry Christmas, Thor,” Tony said under his breath, but no one minded him—  
“And?” Steve asked him.  
“It is done.” Thor answered, eyes glinting, smile broad. “They said to consider it a favor returned for a favor rendered. Oh, and Mother says you are all invited to our New Year’s feasting in Asgard, fortnight next, once Clint is well enough to travel.” The rest of the team smiled and fist-bumped each other while Clint wondered what he’d missed.  
“Huh?”  
“It is nothing.” Thor waved a hand dismissively. “Odin Allfather had to officially sanction his aid for your recovery.”  
“Sayeth what now?” Clint asked, stunned. He watched as Thor handed a package of what looked like…diamond water?—could that even be a thing?—to Cap, and their leader expertly hooked it up to Clint’s IV line. It was Thor who’d brought it, and Cap who approved it, and Tasha watched the process sedately, so Clint figured he shouldn’t get too nervous about the contents.  
“What is that, pixie dust?” he asked anyway.  
“No, stertrel. Gathered from the Rainbow Falls.” Thor said seriously. “Reserved for great warriors in cases of great need. My mother said as much when she aided you in your recovery…”  
Thor blinked at the blank look on Clint’s face, and the prince looked abashed. “Oh.” He looked at his friends and jerked a giant thumb over his shoulder at Clint. “He does not remember?” he asked, in what was obviously intended to be a stage whisper.  
“No, Thor.” Tasha said wryly. “He was out for that part.”  
“Technically, he flatlined, they dragged out the defibrillator, he flatlined again, they did the same thing, and then the third time they couldn’t bring him back at all and they called it.” Tony corrected. “Which was extremely not cool.” Tasha’s fingers tightened—almost painfully—around Clint’s. Pepper put a hand on Tony’s arm and squeezed it gently.  
“Honey, can we not talk about all that? It’s upsetting Tasha.”  
“It upset all of us! AND it was broadcasting LIVE on Youtube. I’m just telling Clint what—“  
“You’re an idiot, Stark.”  
“Shut up, Jolly Green Giant.”  
“Tony, Hulk, please, we’re in the man’s sickroom, could you please keep it down?—“  
“Ah, go put on your pajamas, Sparkly Pants.”  
“Tony, dear, don’t call Steve Sparkly Pants.“  
“I could call him worse things—“  
“I brought my mother from Asgard to save you.” Thor told Clint through the gabble. “The medics of para could not save you here. So I made an decision of execution and brought her—the best healer in Asgard—to you instead.”  
“Executive decision.” Tony corrected, looking pained.  
Thor shrugged. “They are the same, are they not?”  “Ah—“  
“There is a rule against interfering in other realms.” Thor explained to Clint. “Codes to keep law and order in the universe.”  
“Oh.” said Clint, nodding as if he understood.  
“I have placed Earth under my protection. But interactions with realms and their residents can be tricky…and precedents can be set. And there are those who may twist those precedents to no good purpose.”  
“Oh.” said Clint again. He did understand. Sort of. Diplomacy—Earth diplomacy, that was—sort of worked the same way.  
“My father convinced the Council of Rulers that they were simply paying their debt to you—the one they incurred when you saved my mother on your last visit.” Thor smirked. “It was my idea.” He looked regretfully at the machines and wiring still surrounding his friend. “Unfortunately my mother could not heal you as quickly as may be in this realm. Or remain long for lack of protection. But she said she was able to mend the worst injuries, and that you shall certainly make a full recovery. The stertrel should help speed things along.”  
Tony punched Thor proudly on the shoulder. “You clever devil.”  
Thor tried to look modest. “It was rather well done.” he admitted. Clint nodded, feeling a genuine smile spread over his face.  
“Thanks, Thor.” he said. Thor made as if to clap him on the back but refrained at the last possible second. Tasha and Hulk’s blocking arms may have contributed to the save as well.  
All things considered, it was a good Christmas.

The next one—the one where Natasha said “Yes” to a certain question, and started wearing a thin silver ring with twisting leaves and a single glinting ruby in it—was even better.


End file.
